WASHINGTON: Unmindful of the petition from the leftist academic community , those tasked with organizing the Prime Minister's visit have been working vigorously to make it a success, galvanizing a broader community that enjoys a formidable reputation in Silicon Valley for entrepreneurial and managerial excellence and technological savvy.

Besides the public reception at the SAP Center in San Jose, Modi will meet with some of the Valley's top CEOs, many of them of Indian origin, including Google's Sundar Pichai, Adobe System's Shantanu Narayen, and Sandisk's Sanjay Mehrotra. Some of the firms have forked out $50,000 each towards a $800,000 fund that is being used for the community reception, which will have free ticketed entry . Although SAP's capacity is 17,496, the demand for tickets is said to be far greater.

Organisers are planning on installing jumbotrons outside to allow those without tickets to hear Modi. After organizing such Modi jamborees in New York, Dubai, Toronto, and Sydney , the Prime Minister's team appears to have developed a template that impressed community activists in Silicon Valley too. “They are like a well-oiled machine and they have some excellent ground rules,“ a local coordinator gushed, revealing how they had been instructed not to take a $50,000 contribution from the State Bank of India overseas operations because the PMO did not want public funds to be used for the event.

The Prime Minister is also penciled to visit to campuses of Google and Tesla, whi le a sortie to a social media company such as Facebook and Twitter is under consideration if an interaction with users can be organized. Although Tesla hit the headlines last week with its new car breaking all ratings record (it scored 103 out of 100 causing Consumer Report to revise its rating sytem), it is not the company's $ 100,000 car that is of so much interest to the PM and his team as their home battery pack. In fact, two key Tesla executives of Indianorigin (CFO Deepak Ahuja and CIO Jai Vijayan), the first one retiring and the second one on a burn-out sabbatical, are staying on till the end of the month till the Prime Minister's visit.

Modi's recce team that visited the Bay Area earlier this month to finalize his programme decided not to entertain thoughts of the PM having an academic engagement at Stanford or Berkeley because of possible ideological clashes.

For the same reason, the team also decided to use the US-India Business Council (USIBC) platform for the PM's business address rather than being hosted by The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE), which they felt had many disaffected Indian-Americans and members from the subcontinent, rather than being exclusively Indian.

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Several people ET spoke with about Ericsson’s India operations, including its current and former employees, said the Stockholm-based firm has reduced headcount in the last one year or so across functions, in line with its global restructuring.

Several people ET spoke with about Ericsson’s India operations, including its current and former employees, said the Stockholm-based firm has reduced headcount in the last one year or so across functions, in line with its global restructuring.